I'm not seeing what exactly they got upside down from that video and the article doesn't say. That and I'm having a hard time figuring out how you can build something that big with such a glaring error as "Upside down". Major project like that have several layers of supervision and oversight from foremen to site supervisors to agents of the people paying to have it built at a minimum. Then there's surveyors and just the plain old common sense of the people working on it.

There must have been something very wrong with the drawings that made it look right while they were putting it together (probably off site) until they discovered that it wouldn't fit or something when they went to install it. That's all I can think of.

"The only responsible party is the builder. We are going to make them answer for this," Public Works Minister Loreto Silva fumed.

Interesting. I wish my country would handle screw ups like this. But we have a airport that is several times over budget and several years late in opening with no date for opening in sight and stuff like a concert hall where the winning bid was 186 million, yet it will cost 800 million Euros and it will simply be paid. Great. That's why we have those bid system, right?

lucksi:"The only responsible party is the builder. We are going to make them answer for this," Public Works Minister Loreto Silva fumed.

Interesting. I wish my country would handle screw ups like this. But we have a airport that is several times over budget and several years late in opening with no date for opening in sight and stuff like a concert hall where the winning bid was 186 million, yet it will cost 800 million Euros and it will simply be paid. Great. That's why we have those bid system, right?

If there are problems that the specs didn't cover then the company doing the work shouldn't have to pay for them. For example if the bidding specs say that the soil is of one type but when the work starts it's an entirely different type which needs a lot of extra work and material to get it right then whose fault is it? Whoever wrote the specs in the first place. What if they add more or change things after the bidding is over and the winner was selected? Whose fault would that be.

Now if it's because of material overruns due to either waste or the company ordered the wrong grade of material then it's certainly the builders fault as are labor problems.

Radioactive Ass:I'm not seeing what exactly they got upside down from that video and the article doesn't say. That and I'm having a hard time figuring out how you can build something that big with such a glaring error as "Upside down". Major project like that have several layers of supervision and oversight from foremen to site supervisors to agents of the people paying to have it built at a minimum. Then there's surveyors and just the plain old common sense of the people working on it.

There must have been something very wrong with the drawings that made it look right while they were putting it together (probably off site) until they discovered that it wouldn't fit or something when they went to install it. That's all I can think of.

They didn't. They installed the traffic deck backwards so the lanes don't line up, like it shows in the preview image for the video at the top.

Would love to see the shots. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen blueprints with inverted or reversed plans, or conflicting plans/elevations, I swear that architects and structural engineers have become progressively dumber since their specialties became PhDs.

Ok. Not built upside down but installed backwards. Probably the hinge where it attached to the underside of the deck or was attached to the footings. I can see that happening with a bad drawing and it could also cause misalignment. Still sloppy though but not all that difficult to fix in a real sense. It'll cost them though.

The blueprints were probably in english.Even the french exchange students were better at english than the spanish ones, IIRC.

One time I had to greet a new spanish exchange student to our dormitory. He couldn't speak any english at all and we didn't know he was coming, either.We somehow managed to throw some simple spanish sentences together with some french, and could eventually figure out he was in the wrong dorm (yeah, he just finally showed us the address he was going to)

But still, who goes to STUDY somewhere, where they can't speak neither national language nor english?

Radioactive Ass:lucksi: "The only responsible party is the builder. We are going to make them answer for this," Public Works Minister Loreto Silva fumed.

Interesting. I wish my country would handle screw ups like this. But we have a airport that is several times over budget and several years late in opening with no date for opening in sight and stuff like a concert hall where the winning bid was 186 million, yet it will cost 800 million Euros and it will simply be paid. Great. That's why we have those bid system, right?

If there are problems that the specs didn't cover then the company doing the work shouldn't have to pay for them. For example if the bidding specs say that the soil is of one type but when the work starts it's an entirely different type which needs a lot of extra work and material to get it right then whose fault is it? Whoever wrote the specs in the first place. What if they add more or change things after the bidding is over and the winner was selected? Whose fault would that be.

Now if it's because of material overruns due to either waste or the company ordered the wrong grade of material then it's certainly the builders fault as are labor problems.

Specs shouldn't need to cover things like "asphalt paving to be on top surfaces of all roadway sections."

How did they get the steam rollers to hold on the bottom of the bridge?

In my best, but still incredibly deficient, pocketninja voice - This is a perfectly excusable error and is probably just the result of northern hemisphere engineers working in the southern hemisphere. I once installed a toilet upside down for the exact same reason, so I can understand their confusion.

In the video they use the example of a road with a pedestrian/bike lane at one side. When you get to the middle of the bridge, that lane swaps sides of the bridge, so everything is off kilter.

Not quite. A different article said that a component was installed backwards. That graphic had to be incorrect. The way a drawbridge works won't allow for that big of a screwup no matter who was doing it. The bridge structure is made so that the unhinged side is as lightweight as possible and the hinged side has enough weight to balance off the lever action of the longer side. In other words the hinge is on the more built up side and could never even be attached to the lightweight side.

However if the hinge is designed to be offset to allow space for the hoisting gears and then it gets installed backwards (rotated horizontally 180 deg.) that offset will be off by however much that designed offset is. A bad set of drawings that don't make it clear and a structure that allows for it to be put in either way combined with the work being done off-site (as a lot of those types of thing are) can cause this to happen. The deck itself isn't rotated 180 deg. though, that's just way too obvious and you wouldn't be able to attach the hinge anyway.

Public Savant:The blueprints were probably in english.Even the french exchange students were better at english than the spanish ones, IIRC.

One time I had to greet a new spanish exchange student to our dormitory. He couldn't speak any english at all and we didn't know he was coming, either.We somehow managed to throw some simple spanish sentences together with some french, and could eventually figure out he was in the wrong dorm (yeah, he just finally showed us the address he was going to)

But still, who goes to STUDY somewhere, where they can't speak neither national language nor english?

Lots of exchange students do. A couple of years ago my brother in law's family hosted a young German high-school student, at first communicating was difficult, but everybody managed somehow. I think it helped that she was immediately treated like one of the family, including by Mrs.Capt and I and our daughters who took to her as though she was one of their cousins.

By the end of the school year she could speak fluent French. We're still in contact and it's amusing to hear her speak Québecois French with a German accent. She has since gone on to also pick-up Parisian French, Spanish and Portuguese.

capt.hollister:Public Savant: The blueprints were probably in english.Even the french exchange students were better at english than the spanish ones, IIRC.

One time I had to greet a new spanish exchange student to our dormitory. He couldn't speak any english at all and we didn't know he was coming, either.We somehow managed to throw some simple spanish sentences together with some french, and could eventually figure out he was in the wrong dorm (yeah, he just finally showed us the address he was going to)

But still, who goes to STUDY somewhere, where they can't speak neither national language nor english?

Lots of exchange students do. A couple of years ago my brother in law's family hosted a young German high-school student, at first communicating was difficult, but everybody managed somehow. I think it helped that she was immediately treated like one of the family, including by Mrs.Capt and I and our daughters who took to her as though she was one of their cousins.

By the end of the school year she could speak fluent French. We're still in contact and it's amusing to hear her speak Québecois French with a German accent. She has since gone on to also pick-up Parisian French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Don't you speak English at home? Because English is mandatory (to my knowledge) to learn in Germany and you start in 5th grade at the latest.

lucksi:capt.hollister: Public Savant: The blueprints were probably in english.Even the french exchange students were better at english than the spanish ones, IIRC.

One time I had to greet a new spanish exchange student to our dormitory. He couldn't speak any english at all and we didn't know he was coming, either.We somehow managed to throw some simple spanish sentences together with some french, and could eventually figure out he was in the wrong dorm (yeah, he just finally showed us the address he was going to)

But still, who goes to STUDY somewhere, where they can't speak neither national language nor english?

Lots of exchange students do. A couple of years ago my brother in law's family hosted a young German high-school student, at first communicating was difficult, but everybody managed somehow. I think it helped that she was immediately treated like one of the family, including by Mrs.Capt and I and our daughters who took to her as though she was one of their cousins.

By the end of the school year she could speak fluent French. We're still in contact and it's amusing to hear her speak Québecois French with a German accent. She has since gone on to also pick-up Parisian French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Don't you speak English at home? Because English is mandatory (to my knowledge) to learn in Germany and you start in 5th grade at the latest.